The story of Vicky and Ken, married on September 24, 2005. This is their lives, their world, the way they see it.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

The Games and Music Edition…

It’s been a while since I commented on the worlds of games and music – and that’s probably because nobody listens to me anyway – but I thought I would again.

Let’s start with games!

The Pirates of the Caribbean MMO will be going gold soon. I am bound by my agreement from playing the Beta not to comment on the quality of the Beta. This I will not do. As for the game itself, stay far, far away. Kids will love this game… five year old kids… those who don’t play MMOs…

As for WoW, well…after patch 2.2.0 (the one adding in-game verbal chat), my whole game went in the shitter. It just wouldn’t work. The people at Bliz were kind enough to freeze my account until a fix was found. However, after several fixes haven’t worked, a real fix looks a long way off. I’ve even uninstalled and reinstalled the whole thing – a Herculean effort as any WoW player will know. Now, they’re saying that I need to switch back to a Wireless-G network and not use USB, to which I replied “It worked before the patch just fine so it’s not the network that’s the problem.” They just need to fix their game. Until then, I guess I’m not playing.

The irony here is that Keith just bought me 60 days on the game for my birthday. Whoops! I need to call him and thank him… and let him in on the joke… but I figured I’d write it here, in case he’s reading.

So, what does a guy do when WoW is down? Get a life? Hell, no! I’m married! (hee hee) Anyway, I’m a junkie. I need a fix. After playing Oblivion for a while, I decided to take a break from that. Great game, mind you… but… So, I bought Galactic Civilizations. Great game, in the spirit of Master of Orion, but it’s a snack with no story. That’s when I found Two Worlds. Let me start by saying that, if you play games and if you liked Oblivion, there’s a good chance you’ll love this on the PC. The graphics are beautiful and the gameplay is fun. The story is standard and the acting is subpar, sure, but it’s fun. And a lot of little innovations make it a pleasure to play.

I’ll keep busy until they get WoW working again.

In the meantime, maybe I’ll be able to catch up on my music, too. I’ve been horrible about keeping up on my bands. You see, once I really fall for a band or a musician, I become a total fan. I have to get everything they release. I listen over and over – I did, at least, until recently. I’ve just been too busy… um, playing WoW, mostly.

The last music I bought was Amber Rubarth’s. I like her a lot. The best thing about her album, Unfinished Art, is that, while it was released as an EP, she has provided bonus tracks to her fans for download. Her next album is finished and I will do the iTunes on that one, no doubt! But, in the meantime, everything else has fallen behind! I still haven’t purchased the new cd by The Thrills. I don’t have KT Tunstall’s new album. For crying out loud, even the amazing Steve Forbert has a new album that I’ve yet to purchase. Seriously, something is wrong.

I need to rectify that.

Thankfully, Vicky bought me the new one from The Boss (MAGIC) for my birthday. It slams into high gear from the first track, Radio Nowhere. (I previously posted it here.) I was surprised to hear him channeling Billy Joel in Your Own Worst Enemy, but have you seen Grampa Bill lately? Shit, someone has to!

Granted, I’d be completely happy, content, and overjoyed, if all I bought was a new Al Stewart album every two weeks – but this is the real world, right? People are out there pouring their hearts into instruments and microphones, into digital inputs, and I love music. I need to get to that.